Top 50 streamers in May 2013 (plus WCS numbers)

This month I've been focusing a bit more on WCS numbers than player streams, since last month saw the first full month of WCS KR, EU and NA action. There's also a poll at the end of the post about it, so do feel free to participate! Player stream numbers are still there for your viewing pleasure though, of course.

For those of you who don't already know what this is about: I'm gathering various data from all the streams that are presented on teamliquid.net (viewers, game, events, etc.) and use that data to produce the pretty tables you see below. The tables only contain SC2 players (that is, people streaming games of Starcraft 2 being played by the streamer themselves) and not casters, teams or other streams. The tables also only contain Starcraft 2 related activities. So CatZ streaming Dota2 will not be taken into account, for instance.

The list

Due to space limitations, I have to shorten the headers and leave some data out of the tables presented here. You can get the full tables from the links below.The headers aren't as clear as I'd like them to be thanks to this, so here's a quick explanation, just in case: "Viewers" denotes the average viewers in the given month. "Hours" are the hours played. "Place diff" and "Viewer diff" are the place and viewer differences compared to last month.

Also, the HTML version linked beneath the images has some more information that I had to leave out due to space limitation, most notably the featured status of the players.

It looked pretty close at times, but Stephano ended up being #1. Again. He lost a good amount of viewers in the last month, but his biggest rival, Grubby, lost even more. Neither player streamed particularly much last month, however, so their average viewer numbers are much more volatile, compared to, for instance..

DeMusliM! Over 100 hours streamed last month, and still #2 in average viewers. That's pretty impressive, and it got him an easy #1 spot in the other list over his former teammate Idra.

And while we're at it, yes, that peak of almost 14k viewers for Idra happened shortly after he was let go from EG. And as you can see, his overall numbers aren't bad at all, either.

Jaedong's numbers have finally stopped their free fall. The legend gained over 600 viewers compared to the previous month.

With Jim and MacSed, we have two Chinese players who made it into the list! It's quite likely that the Chinese success in WCS NA put them into the spotlight, and deservedly so. These guys are good!

Here's some information on some of the lesser known names in the lists:

Hui:Hui is a Taiwanese player who is mostly playing in the TeSL. His fanbase seems to be found mostly outside of teamliquid and in the Taiwanese community, unsurprisingly.

Filter: Filter is mostly known for creating awesome tutorials. Check out his thread, Bronze to Masters, Improving Mechanics! He's also associated with Quantic Gaming, though not as a player.

Currently, I have no way of getting MC's stream numbers, since he is streaming from azubu.tv. He's not listed on teamliquid (see the other thread), and there does not seem to be an API for azubu.tv either, so it's currently not possible to get live viewer data from them. There are other SC2 streamers on azubu.tv that I am missing, too, but those would most likely not have made it into the list.

Notable absentees this month: Polt, Nerchio, Maru, NonY. Oh, and Destiny. Seems like he's back to playing these pesky MOBA games.

If you find any mistakes or errors in the lists, please do let me know, especially concerning team changes or players that you are absolutely sure should be on the lists, but are not.

The big picture

(The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)

We're back to pre HotS numbers, at least when it comes to player streams. That's not good for players who stream, obviously, but I don't see any cause for concern for the community's growth.

As I said last month, there are two factors that would inevitably lead to lower player stream numbers: First, the HotS hype, like any other hype, would die down again. And, more importantly, there is WCS. And forgive me my French, but there is a shitton of WCS content out there. Some days, we could watch 10 hours or more of WCS content every day. And that's just insane, and inevitably some of those WCS viewers will be former player stream viewers. WCS streams and player streams are competing for the same audience, after all.

Speaking of which..

WCS

The usual caveat applies: The GSL numbers taken below are solely those from twitch.tv, and do not include people viewing from gomtv.net or numbers from the Korean streams.

Another thing to note is that WCS EU has multiple streams for different languages. I decided to add them all up, since it is unlikely that there are that many people who watched different language streams concurrently. Still, it's entirely possible, and the WCS EU numbers are most likely a bit inflated due to this.

Do you see how many bars that are in that barchart? We could watch some WCS content for almost every single day of the month last month. It's absolutely crazy. That's good and bad.

First of all, the good: We used to go bonkers when WCS EU in 2012 had over 100.000 concurrent viewers at one point. The WCS EU finals in this year easily beat that number, and with all the different language streams combined, had an 80.000 viewers average! I dare say that WCS EU season 1 has been a big success.

WCS KR did not quite get as many viewers, but the time zone difference alone could explain that. 40.000 viewers on average for the finals is still quite impressive. Also noteworthy are the almost 40.000 viewers on average for the Group of Death in the Round of 16.

WCS AM has been struggling a bit, however. The finals had about half the viewers of WCS EU, and here we cannot use the time zone difference as an excuse. Or are there really so many more European Starcraft fans out there compared to American Starcraft fans? WCS AM has done consistently worse than WCS EU. What do you guys think is the reason for that? I'm especially interested in comments readers from the US/Americas on whether they watch WCS AM, or if they even prefer WCS EU over it. I've also added a poll to gauge the popularity of the various WCS regions to the bottom of the post. Do participate!

Now, the not necessarily good: WCS has been dominating the entire month, both in terms of viewers and in terms of pure content output. Just look at that list, and you'll quickly understand why non-WCS tournament organizers have been complaining about the dominance of WCS. There's practically no room for a regular format like NASL to take place anywhere in there, and a tournament final like Shoutcraft US had to be squeezed between a WCS EU and a WCS NA cast.

So instead of various tournaments from various organizers happening throughout the month, we pretty much have WCS all the way. Is that good? Is that going to help form a coherent storyline, like Blizzard likes to say, or is that going to hurt esports in the long run by stifling or outright killing medium sized tournaments? We can't deny that the WCS numbers themselves have been pretty damn good, but that's not all that matters. We will see how it'll turn out. Personally, I'm looking forward to the coming non-WCS tournaments, especially MLG and Dreamhack. Let's see how they'll do in the new environment.

Proleague vs. GSTL

As above, take these numbers with a grain of salt:

Both Proleague and GSTL numbers are only taken from twitch.tv.

Proleague also has a Korean stream, as well as a TV audience. Neither is taken into account here.

As already mentioned, GSTL viewers watching from gomtv.net are not taken into account.

In addition, the link to the current GSTL stream on teamliquid.net more often than not leads right to gomtv.net, and not to twitch.tv. When that happens, the numbers don't even take viewers from teamliquid.net into account. That would explain some of the numbers below.

Compared to WCS, the Proleague and GSTL numbers have barely changed, and are far below what we have seen from WCS. Team tournaments may be the big thing for Koreans, but outside of Korea, people definitely prefer individual tournaments.

WCS Poll

Poll: Which WCS do you follow/watch?

I watch WCS KR and WCS EU (464)

37%

I watch all three (KR/EU/NA) (446)

35%

I only watch WCS EU (124)

10%

I only watch WCS KR (112)

9%

I watch WCS EU and WCS NA (88)

7%

I watch WCS KR and WCS NA (23)

2%

I only watch WCS NA (10)

1%

1267 total votes

Your vote: Which WCS do you follow/watch?

(Vote): I only watch WCS KR(Vote): I only watch WCS EU(Vote): I only watch WCS NA(Vote): I watch all three (KR/EU/NA)(Vote): I watch WCS KR and WCS EU(Vote): I watch WCS KR and WCS NA(Vote): I watch WCS EU and WCS NA

So that's all for this month.Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!

WCS AM has been struggling a bit, however. The finals had about half the viewers of WCS EU, and here we cannot use the time zone difference as an excuse. Or are there really so many more European Starcraft fans out there compared to American Starcraft fans? WCS AM has done consistently worse than WCS EU. What do you guys think is the reason for that? I'm especially interested in comments readers from the US/Americas on whether they watch WCS AM, or if they even prefer WCS EU over it. I've also added a poll to gauge the popularity of the various WCS regions to the bottom of the post. Do participate!

WCS EU was exciting. There was constantly something going on in between games. There were great casters and a host who kept things entertaining, a small crowd added a little bit of excitement if someone won, The games were just better and had memorable moments (forgg vs stephano). To beat the dead horse a little more, EU had mostly EU players. Players that people want to watch.

WCS AM was not exciting to watch at all. No crowd. Almost zero content outside of the games. No host. Long shots of the NY skyline and players room. Mediocre casting at best. When HerO won there was just dead silence followed by an awkward award ceremony. Oh yeah and the obvious... No NA players to actually root for.

Seriously, things like the crowd chanting for TLO really added to the atmosphere. Plus, it was easy for me to pull up WCS EU while I was working, on an additional monitor The production value for WCS NA was just... kind of meh.

Does the total stream viewers per month include the WCS numbers? That would be surprising that it dipped that low, but I guess it was to be expected that the numbers would die down after the launch of HotS. It will be interesting to see what Blizzard does in the future to try and grow the game, rather than just have peaks at every launch.

On June 04 2013 02:28 Clawfinger wrote:Does the total stream viewers per month include the WCS numbers? That would be surprising that it dipped that low, but I guess it was to be expected that the numbers would die down after the launch of HotS. It will be interesting to see what Blizzard does in the future to try and grow the game, rather than just have peaks at every launch.

I don't want to watch a few Koreans play in a sterile office environment with no hype and atmosphere not forgetting the casters. Even though they did bring in Bitterdam to save the day we can't forget who has been doing the other 98% of the WCS NA. The downtime was pretty bad too.

RIP Starcraft scene in the UK. Defeated by EG money and Swedish Zergs.